Brian1972: I would agree that neither Hermione nor her classmates are being entirely rational here. But, that's something to be expected of eleven year olds!

BOOK 1: HERMIONE GRANGER AND THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE

Chapter 6: Shop

Three Years Earlier

"Think of the components of your bot as pieces of sculpture. Each component has a certain shape and size. Each has a physical relationship to the pieces next to it. The negative space surrounding the components also gives an impression of overall form. Constantly check your work from all sides. You are creating in three dimensions. Take time to look at your work as you flip it over in your hands. Does one side look better than the other? What can you do to make it look better? All things have particular shape relationships that determine its overall aesthetic appeal. You are only limited in this by the electronic restraints of the particular circuit you are using. But, if you are clever, a way around design obstacles can lead to unexpected and pleasing results."

"This is really boring," Tiffany whispered.

"You didn't have to come," Hermione whispered back.

"Didn't have to come? When you badgered us about it for weeks?"

"I didn't badger," said Hermione, "and it hasn't been–well I didn't badger!"

"You did badger though," chimed in Ethel.

"Et tu?"

"Girls!" hissed Mrs. Rosensweig, "Pay attention!"

Mrs. Rosensweig was the faculty sponsor for the robotics club, and as such was responsible for hosting the guest speaker currently addressing the Harold and Eleanor Robinson Memorial Auditorium at Oakbank School. The auditorium was not full. In fact, there were barely two dozen students in attendance, which Hermione found baffling. Who wouldn't want to learn about one of the most exciting trends in robotics?

The lecturer was, Hermione could admit, not the most engaging speaker she'd ever heard. But–and this made up for a lot–he'd brought actual, real schematics for the robots he was describing. And he was going to hand them out to "interested students"!

If only Hermione had more time… She was intensely jealous of the girls who boarded here. They could spend their evenings at the school library, the workshop, the music room… Not that any of them did. Hermione couldn't understand it. They had all these resources at their disposal, any time they wanted, and they just ignored them to sit around watching TV in their dorms or gossiping or whatever else they did.

At the age of nine, Hermione already knew that she wanted to grow up and work at a school. She wasn't entirely sure in what capacity–teaching was an option of course, but the library was also fascinating. Mrs. Johannson, the Oakbank librarian, always seemed so happy finding books for the students, and Hermione couldn't blame her. To constantly be introducing new people to incredible books, and for that to be your job? That would be incredible. She had also heard about University professors, who did a little bit of teaching but the rest of the time… well, she wasn't completely sure, but university sounded amazing, like school only better, so working there would be amazing too.

As soon as the lecturer was finished, and as soon as she could without seeming rude, Hermione rushed forward to get what she had really come for: a copy of schematics, printed in black-and-white dots on four pages of continuous paper with tractor holes running down the sides.

She looked down the list of components. The school shop class had motors, and rows and rows of the tiny, color coded resistors and capacitors and inductors she would need. The small solar cells were less common, and the light dependent resistors even rarer still, but those Hermione had known ahead of time would be an issue, and after several weeks of cajoling, Mrs. Rosensweig had finally caved, and the parts had arrived just two days ago.

Hermione rushed out of the auditorium–she had half an hour of study period before the end of the day–and spread the schematics out in front of her on one of the free benches in shop class. They were a little more—well, schematic—than she might have hoped, a basic circuit diagram along with text providing recommendations and advice. Before she could do anything, then, Hermione would need to plan out exactly which components would go where, and how the whole structure would fit together.

Half an hour later, Hermione had almost finished visualizing the circuit components when a crowd approached the room. Hermione looked up to see two teachers, three older students, and the lecturer they had just been listening to enter.

"As you can see, we have a well-outfitted STEM lab, particularly for a pre-preparatory program," Mrs. Rosensweig was saying.

"Hmm," was all that the lecturer (Mr Bronsen? Hermione thought) said. He had raised his eyebrow, and clearly did not think that the room was "well-outfitted", pre-preparatory program or not.

"Is that girl… playing with those components?" asked Mr. probably-Bronsen.

"She most certainly is not!" put in Tiffany before anyone else could react. "A robotics prodigy, she is."

"Mr. Bronsen?" Hermione added before the situation could escalate. "You were lecturing about phototrophs, and I was very eager to get started. So I've been working to realize your schematic with the parts we have here." Hermione gestured to the bench.

Mr. Bronsen (who didn't object to Hermione calling him that so she must have remembered the name correctly) walked over. He looked at what Hermione was working on. "Well, as it's quite an advanced model, I wouldn't expect you to be able to get it right. Still, there are lessons even in failure, so it is worth trying."

"Thank you, Mr. Bronsen!" said Hermione quickly. She could see Tiffany behind him gearing up for what would only be a verbal assault if they were lucky, and wanted to head things off.

Mr. Bronsen muttered a few more pieces of condescending advice before he left the room. Hermione let out the breath she was holding.

"What a tosser!" said Tiffany. "Did you hear the way he was talking to you? Like you don't know which end of the soldering iron to hold?"

"Yes, we all heard," said Hermione. "But it wouldn't do any good to get into a row with the lecturer the teacher invited, would it?"

"He was being a prat!" insisted Tiffany.

"Yes but think, Tiffany," interjected Ethel. "Mrs. Rosensweig invited him, she promoted the lecture. She was hardly going to turn around and say, 'why Hermione you're entirely correct, this man is a gigantic prat, isn't he?'" Even Tiffany laughed at Ethel's spot on impersonation of their teacher's rather pompous tone.

"You have to think about what you're going to get out of a conversation, not just what you want to say," continued Ethel.

"That sounds like something your dad would say," said Tiffany.

Hermione frowned. "Uncle Chris gives good advice. He was right about how to handle those bullies last year, wasn't he?"

Now Tiffany frowned. "Yeah, he was," she said at last.

It was the one subject the three girls couldn't fully agree on. Ethel worshiped the ground her dad walked on, and took any advice he gave as inspired. Hermione owed Uncle Chris so much, it didn't feel right to criticize him. But Tiffany… Tiffany always held herself slightly removed from the rest of their family. She appreciated them, even liked many of them, but there was something that kept her from fully endorsing the whole thing. Hermione suspected it came from her dad; she hadn't gotten the whole story yet, but from what she had heard Tiffany's dad used to work for Uncle Chris. That wasn't so unusual; lots of people worked for Uncle Chris. It was the used to part that Hermione wasn't sure what to do with.

"Bollocks, I have to go," Hermione realized, looking at the time.

"Language!" cried Ethel. Hermione smiled; getting a rise of out Ethel was half the reason she kept saying the word after she'd picked it up from Bacon last year.

The cab dropped Hermione off in a gray drizzle. Hermione, who hadn't packed an umbrella that morning when it had been sunny, ran down the lane to get home, throwing herself into the house and only then skidding to a stop when she realized there was a man standing in her kitchen.

"Dad!" she squealed after a moment of shocked silence.

"Hi Dad, I'm hungry," said Eddie Granger.

Hermione laughed, shaking her head. She didn't bother with any of the questions she knew would be fruitless–where were you, what were you doing–as everyone who knew Eddie these days knew that trying to get a straight answer out of him was like trying to squeeze water from a sound. She didn't even ask him where Ma was. Ma would have left a note in the kitchen, and certainly would not have trusted Eddie to pass along a message.

She would just enjoy whatever time she had, before he inevitably disappeared again.

Sure enough, a post-it in the kitchen indicated that Ma was delivering a casserole to the McLean's a block over. Hermoine knew from Ma that Teddy McLean was laid up in hospital, and she knew from listening in to conversations she wasn't supposed to at Uncle Chris's that he was there because he'd been beaten up. Hermione also knew that Cindy McLean was a talker, and Ma wouldn't be so cruel as to deprive her of a sympathetic ear right now, so they shouldn't expect her back anytime soon.

Hermione pulled the remainder of the casserole out of the fridge and threw it in the oven to warm. She smiled and looked back at her dad.

Eddie Granger had never been a big man, and while her friends' dads had steadily thickened over the years, the opposite had happened to Hermione's. She could see bony hips rising above too-large pants he must have grabbed from a bin somewhere.

His hair was a rat's nest (it matched Hermione's in color and texture exactly) but where it had once fallen in a shaggy mess around his face, it now flew back from an ever-higher forehead.

For all that he was a mess, for all that he was incapable of providing for his daughter, even with simple advice, Hermione was always glad to see him. He was a sculpture in glass, fragile and breakable, but beautiful in his own way.

Hermione even thought herself lucky in some ways. She knew lots of kids her age whose dads drifted in and out of their lives; at least hers had a reason nobody could blame him for.

"You've grown," Eddie said, watching Hermione set the table.

"You were here in the summer, remember? I haven't grown a lot since then."

"Not taller," said Eddie, "but you're more powerful. Stretched your core." Hermione could only stare. Her dad would say such odd things.

Eddie hummed to himself happily, lost in his own world. The oven timer dinged, and Ma got back just as Hermione finished setting the table. They ate and talked of nothing in particular - the weather, Hermione's school projects, which neighborhood children had gotten up to which trouble this week, how said children were related to Ma's various friends, and how Hermione really should know this already, because don't you remember that so-and-so was the one who dropped you off here that time you were sick at the whosits?

After dinner they played card games because the weather had gotten progressively more miserable as the evening deepened. It was a challenge when Eddie was around: not only did they have to think of games for three people, the games had to be ones where it didn't matter too much if one of the participants only occasionally paid attention to what he was doing. Crazy eights worked well.

Ma only lasted a few rounds before her itch to do something productive resurfaced and she went to fetch the laundry. She played two more hands while also folding clothes, then another three while jotting down notes in her ever-present reminder book.

"I can see her in you," Eddie said, as Ma shuffled. Ma's hands stopped. Hermione held her breath.

"Dad?" asked Hermione.

"Your mother. I can see her in you."

Hermione and Ma looked at each other. Eddie never talked about Hermione's mother. Not in front of Hermione. Ma knew, though Hermione did not, that that day he had been in the hospital after he showed up at Big Chris's, Eddie had raved about a woman who was beautiful, but who he had seemed to be afraid of. But they had never been able to get him to confirm if the mystery woman was actually Hermione's mother.

"I hope… I hope you don't turn out like her."

"What do you mean?" asked Hermione.

And then, as if he hadn't said anything at all out of the ordinary, Eddie's attention turned back to the card game.

"Tricky thing, a deck of cards. Never know what you're going to get, eh?"

"Dad!" repeated Hermione. "What were you saying just now?"

"Cards! More possibilities in a deck of cards than in the sun, you know…"

"About my mom! Dad!" Hermione insisted. Ma started to hold out a hand. They had long agreed that pushing Eddie never did anything good.

"But he can't!" Hermione looked at Ma. "He can't just say that and then go back to–"

"Bet that one's a Queen," Eddie muttered, gesturing to the top card of the pile.

"Dad!" Hermione said one more time, practically yelling. Then, tears welling in the corners of her eyes, Hermione stomped her foot and left the table.

Two hours later Hermione lay on her bed, lights still on, staring at the ceiling. It was funny–when she'd first got home that night she'd thought that maybe she was glad for once that she didn't board, as otherwise she'd have missed Eddie. Now that she didn't want to talk to her dad any more the feeling of missing out on whatever the other girls were doing at Oakbank returned worse than ever.

Sometimes it just got to Hermione. Particularly when the weather was bad, like it had been all week. It made their tiny home feel even tinier.

After Hermione had sulked herself out she got up to say goodnight and brush her teeth. Eddie had already bedded down on the couch he used when he was here.

"Come here," said Ma, and she pulled Hermione into a hug. Hermione realized with a start that she was almost the same height as Ma now.

"I love you sweetheart, and so does your dad."

"I know," said Hermione. "I know."

Mr. Bronsen was right about one thing: the robot, Hermione learned over the next few weeks, was very advanced for a year three student. Which made it a good thing that Hermione was a very advanced student.

"Can you pass me the capacitor there?" Hermione asked Tiffany.

"This one?"

"No, the 15 nF one."

"You could have reached that one yourself."

"I'm holding a hot soldering gun!"

"Here's your precious fifteen nanofarted capacitor then."

For all that she grumbled, Tiffany was an indispensable part of the operation. She had a knack for arranging the struts in a way that would be stable.

"Hey Hermione, I think I'll come home today after all," Ethel said, coming into the shop class.

"Oh…" said Hermione.

"It's just so miserable out, I won't get any riding done if I stay here anyways, and on the weekend Dad said he'd pick up the next Arrows book for me so he should have it by now."

"Yeah…" said Hermione. It was miserable out. There had been a brief window of sunshine a week and a half ago; otherwise the month had delivered everything one might expect for a November in England.

Ethel narrowed her eyes. "Hermione, why do I get the feeling you're not happy about me coming home with you?"

"That's not… it's not that… it's just…"

Ethel simply waited, staring at Hermione.

"Okay I'm not actually going back to your dad's tonight."

"You're not? But I heard you arrange the cab."

"I'm going back to Salford, obviously. I'm just… meeting Soap. For an errand."

"You. Are meeting Soap. For an errand?"

"Yes?"

"Hermione?" Tiffany said. Hermione looked at her. She'd never known Tiffany to speak so softly, not since they had barely known each other that first year. "I don't think you should do errands for… for Soap."

"Oh, Tiffany, it's nothing dangerous or anything. It's not even anything illegal. I'm just looking over a new property to see if I notice anything."

Both Tiffany and Ethel looked askance at this. "Just to see if you notice anything?" asked Ethel.

"Yeah. It's… it's a little embarrassing. But it turns out that Soap is very… superstitious? And he has this idea that I'm some sort of–"

"Lucky charm?" put in Ethel, who knew that several of her dad's lieutenants called her friend "Lucky" when they thought her mom couldn't hear.

"Yes, that." responded Hermione. "He just thinks the businesses will do better if I have a look around. It's honestly no big deal."

Tiffany didn't seem convinced.

Soap met her at the library.

"Lucky," said Soap with a short nod of his head. In all the time Hermione had known him he had never really aged, but that was because he had always looked like a weathered sculpture. His hair formed tight, dirty brown curls around his head, his face was wrinkled and pockmarked and permanently tanned. His eyes were thin, as if he was always squinting at something.

To Hermione, he was just Soap - an ever present part of Salford, hanging out in doorways and alleys, smoking his Bensons. Hermione knew that most of her classmates at Oakbank thought that cigarette smoke smelled disgusting, but to her it smelled like home, though Ma would murder anyone who brought it into her actual house.

"Alright," Soap said, "we've got a place by the pier we're opening up. The boys set it up on Tuesday, there should be nobody there now. Ready?"

Hermione just nodded, and the two of them got into Soap's well-maintained but extremely plain hatchback.

A short drive later, and Hermione was looking around the inside of the club, wide-eyed. There were tall tables scattered around a large open space, with a newly polished wooden floor. On one side of the room was a raised platform with speakers and a mass of tangled cables connecting boards full of knobs and sliders and various black boxes.

"Just don't touch any of the cables," said Soap. "The sound guy was here till two in the morning hooking them all up and testing it, he'll have an aneurysm if you change anything now."

The other side of the room had another raised platform, this one empty except for a single pole that stretched to the ceiling.

"What's that for?" asked Hermione.

"Oh bollocks. It's not for anything. I mean, it's not important," said Soap. "And, uh, maybe don't mention that I brought you here to anyone, yeah?"

"Like I ever do," said Hermione.

Ever since the day, three years ago now, that Hermione had spotted the strange, invisible sculpture at family dinner, Soap had developed a strange superstition about her. Well, Hermione supposed he had always been superstitious–calling her "Lucky," asking her for race winners in advance, actually placing bets on the horses she picked. But that day at Uncle Chris's seemed to have confirmed his belief that Hermione was somehow magical.

And his belief that their rivals in the Manchester underworld were using curses to cheat.

So Soap would bring Hermione to each new venture the gang set up, to make sure that there was nothing funny going on.

The weirdest part was that, occasionally, Hermione actually found something. Once there was a bundle of herbs she had never seen before, tied into an intricate knot and hung from the doorway. Another time a series of letters Hermione didn't recognize had been painted in a rusty color across a mantle. Then there was that stone, which wasn't anything abnormal to look at, just a smooth, black stone that could have come out of any creek, but it had felt deeply, intensely wrong to Hermione in a way she couldn't quite describe.

And all of these things, Soap couldn't see until Hermione touched them. For a time Hermione wondered if Soap was putting her on, playing some sort of game. But one time Bacon had come along too, and he was far too serious for that. And in any case Hermione couldn't imagine what sort of game it could be. It would have been a terribly boring prank, to pretend you couldn't see something that was right there and then see it once it was pointed out. What would be the point?

So Hermione looked around, over and under tables and around beams and lintels.

She even took a look at the platform Soap didn't want to explain, with its single pole rising from the middle.

That was when she spotted it. Well, it wasn't so much that she spotted it as that she felt it.

This was the other reason she knew Soap wasn't just having her on. Sure, he could pretend not to see something, but Hermione could feel the things she found, feel them warm and tingly—or else cold and hard—or one time she didn't like to think about, sickly-sweet and overripe. That couldn't possibly be faked.

Hermione grabbed a chair to climb up to the beam. Yes, she thought, this is definitely something. There was a statue standing on top, and it was making Hermione feel… strange. As if she was nervous before a big test, but somehow more pleasant than that. It wasn't entirely comfortable.

Then she saw the statue, and that was definitely uncomfortable.

It was a woman, short, fat and… Hermione blushed. The statue had enormous boobs, hanging down her round belly, with large nipples clearly detailed in stone.

"Um… Soap?"

"Yeah, what–I told you not to go over there!" the old man said as he stumped across the room.

"There's, um. That." Hermione pointed to the statue, as she hopped down off of the chair.

"What? Oh. That." Soap looked as embarrassed as Hermione, and he tried to hide it by quickly pulling the statue down. But like many of the other "weird issues" Hermione had dealt with, it couldn't be pulled down by brute force. Soap, unwilling to admit that he needed to ask Hermione to come over and help him, pulled harder, with both hands now. All that this accomplished was that he accidentally kicked the chair from beneath him, and was suddenly suspended in the air, flailing his legs and wrapping them around the pole as he struggled to hold on to the large-bosomed statue.

"Just– wait– I'll get the chair." As much as she had grown, Hermione knew she had no hope of catching Soap, who had always been a big man and was no smaller now.

Quickly the chair was arranged under him. Soap got to the ground, and then, looking very red-faced, muttered, "I'm going to need you to unstick that."

Hermione, equally red-faced, climbed up the chair and touched the statue. As usual, she could feel it, warmth passing through her fingers. She wanted, she wanted it to come unstuck from the rafter.

With an inaudible pop, the statue came unstuck and fell down into Hermione's hands.

Up close, it actually wasn't so bad. Hermione used her hands to cover the boobs and realized that the unformed face on the statue actually felt rather kind.

Later, once they'd disposed of the statue and Soap drove Hermione back to Ma's, Hermione remembered what had been bothering her at school.

"Soap?" she said.

"Yes, Lucky?"

"Why are we keeping this a secret? And why do Ethel and Tiffany think it's a bad idea?"

Soap paused for a long moment.

"It's… it's complicated, Lucky."

Another pause.

"I am very bright for my age, you know."

"Yeah, I know you are, Lucky. Okay, here's the thing. Your Uncle Chris, he has lots of people working for him, yeah?"

"Yeah. Including you."

"Including me. And you might have noticed, most of the people working for Big Chris, the ones that you meet, anyway, are blokes?"

Hermione had noticed that. She'd assumed it had something to do with what her Social Studies teacher called "gender discrimination," like how most of Parliament were men.

"Well, not exactly. I mean, maybe, what do I know. But Big Chris, he does have women working for him, just not in the types of jobs that he wants to see you in."

Hermione frowned at this. What types of jobs was Soap talking about?

Soap could see her confusion.

"So, that club we were just at, yeah? Once it opens, they'll be women working there, dressed… in ways that will make men want to look at them. Do you know what I'm saying?"

"Like… in a bikini?" Hermione had heard reference to this mythical swimwear, whispered by the older girls at Oakbank.

"... yeah, like a bikini. And, well, that's not the type of job your uncle wants to see you working."

"Okay. So I won't work that type of job."

Soap sighed, visibly frustrated with how the conversation was going.

"Your Uncle wants you to get far away from here. So does Ma for that matter. They're sending you to that fancy school so that you can go to an even fancier school, so you can marry some bloke making a hundred quid down in London. They want to see you raise your kids without ever teaching them when it's safe to go out and when it's not, or what to look for to know if a man means to hurt you."

Hemrione was stunned. She didn't think she'd heard Soap say so much in one go since… ever. And, well, Soap wasn't wrong, Hermione had learned those things, but it hadn't really occurred to her that other children did not.

"Your family," the older man finished, "they just want better for you than this." He gestured to the neighborhood around them.

"But I could make this better," replied Hermione. "If everyone who can leave just leaves, it never gets better. I could still go to those fancy schools, but I could come back and make things better here."

Soap smiled, a sad smile of somebody who hoped for a different outcome but never really believed it would happen. "I know you could, Lucky. You're not somebody to just leave your friends when you think you can help them. Just… your family wants what's best for you, okay?"

Hermione sighed, a little frustrated that Soap didn't see her point of view. She could convince Uncle Chris though, she was sure of it. People talked about Uncle Chris like all he was was a criminal, and Hermione had recently come to the realization that, well he actually was, but she also knew that beneath all of that, he really did want to make Salford a better place for people to live.

Tiffany held the strut in place while Hermione screwed in the last joint.

Then it was just a matter of checking all the wires one last time—every connection looked okay, none of the cracking solder Mrs. Rosensweig had told them to look out for.

"Okay," said Hermione, "this is it."

"It's going to work," added Ethel. "You're brilliant and it's going to work and your face will be the next cover of Robotics Monthly."

Hermione knew she was being silly, but it still left a warm feeling in her chest to have her friends here.

She held her hand over the switch. She wanted this to work. She desperately wanted, wanted the robot to work.

She flipped the switch.

For a brief, heart stopping moment, absolutely nothing happened.

Then, with a whirr, motors connected to leg joints activated.

The robot hunched, took a tentative step forward, then turned and started unsteadily walking towards Hermione.

It reached her and lifted one leg to touch her. As soon as it made contact, there was a soft, satisfied beep.

"Is it supposed to do that?" asked Tiffany, a worried look on her face.

"It needs a name," decided Hermione.

An hour later, and Hermione was extremely late for her cab home. She didn't care. Figaro, as they called the robot, had now walked around the shop class, climbing up and down tables, feeling barriers with its legs and emitting soft beeps whenever Hermione touched it.

Ethel had gone to get the teacher, excited to show her the progress they'd made.

To their surprise, when they came back, it was with the robotics lecturer from a few weeks ago in tow. Mr. Bronsen, Hermione remembered.

"I was in the neighborhood, so I popped in to see how the students were making out with those designs," Mr. Bronsen said by way of explanation.

"And this young lady," he gestured to Ethel, "tells me you've got one working?"

Hermione, Ethel, and Tiffany were all smiles as they stood out of the way to show off Figaro.

The robot was, at that moment, learning about different textures. After Hermione had watched it totter around the room investigating whatever it could touch, she had wondered how it would react to something soft, like a fabric. Judging from the way Figaro was unsuccessfully trying to wrap a bit of t-shirt around itself, Hermione thought he liked it.

"That's…" said Mr. Bronsen as he took in the robot's antics. "That's… is this some kind of joke?"

Hermione stared at him, uncertain why he looked so angry. "…No?"

"Young lady," Mr. Bronsen said in his most patronizing tone, "I'm sure you thought that—whatever this was—was a very clever prank. But your ignorance of all things robotic is showing. It is simply impossible that you could have created a robot, in the short time since I last visited, with this level of balance, awareness, and coordination."

Hermione blushed. She had tried to manage her expectations of the teacher's reaction and stop being, as Ethel put it, "just so hungry for teacher's praise all the time," but she honestly hadn't expected that the lecturer would be upset with her.

"Well what do you think she did then?" asked Ethel.

"Excuse me?"

"If you don't think she made this, how do you think we got it?"

Hermione was impressed by her friend's logic, and much more impressed that she was actually confronting a teacher on her behalf.

"I'm sure you think it hilarious to have one of your parents build this for you and pretend that it's yours, but I have to inform you that in the real world this type of academic dishonesty is—what is so funny?"

Hermione, Ethel, and Tiffany had all smirked at each other, at the thought that any of their parents were up to building a robot.

Mr. Bronsen would have gone on at more length about the disrespect he was being shown, but at that precise moment Figaro jumped onto him.

Figaro wasn't a large robot—he was about the size of a ferret—and he didn't have any parts that could cause damage. Somehow, though, Mr. Bronsen's hair got tangled up in one of the struts. There was a lot of yelling, and eventually scissors were involved.

Later, when Mrs. Rosensweig gathered the three girls to "discuss the day's events," they had an extremely hard time keeping themselves from giggling.

Mrs. Rosensweig obviously could not prove that Hermione had anything to do with the way her small robot behaved. Just as obviously, she had not lasted as long as she has as a teacher while letting little things like "proof" get in the way of deserved punishment. So the three girls were given detentions and a note to their parents would be sent encouraging them to "observe the discipline and obedience to authority we expect of Oakbank students."

Hermione felt it was worth it. And she was sure that Figaro, who was vibrating happily in her lap while Hermione sat directly under a lamp for maximum light on his solar cells, would agree.

The house was quiet and the lights were out, but Hermione couldn't get to sleep. Too many things buzzed around in her brain, and the longer she laid there, the less comfortable she felt. Ma hadn't chewed her out for getting home late, but she could tell she'd been disappointed.

And Figaro, the robot. Mr. Bronsen was a wanker no doubt about it, but he'd been right, hadn't he? There seemed no possible way Hermione had stuck a bunch of circuits together and made something that… well Figaro had known what was going on in the room, he'd recognized that Mr. Branson was a threat. But that just wasn't possible. Unless Soap and his superstitions were right, and she was… magical. But no, that couldn't be it.

Another possibility tickled her mind. What if she was going crazy? Ma had always held that her dad had lost his mind after some torture he had endured at the hands of a rival gang, but what if that wasn't it? What if it was something genetic, something Hermione had inherited and, and,

She kept closing her eyes, breathing deeply, and opening them again, looking to the red numbers on her digital alarm clock and hoping it would be morning. But time flowed like ketchup out of a glass bottle, stubbornly viscous in the face of all prodding.

Finally she got up and went downstairs for a glass of milk—water, actually, there was just enough milk for breakfast but there wouldn't be if she had it now.

She turned and practically screamed as she saw a man in the doorway.

"Dad!" Hermione said. "You scared me!"

"She was beautiful, like when a sea storm hits the shore." Hermione realized with a start that he was talking about her mother again.

"You mean… my mom?" Hermione asked. She knew that Ma would advise her not to push him. But how could she not take the chance to get some actual answers?

"Like a stooping hawk. A falcon."

"But Dad… who was she?"

"You'll know her if you see her. You'll know. And if you do? If you ever see her?"

Hermione leaned in, to catch what her father was saying in almost a whisper.

"Run."

Author's Note: Mr. Bronsen's lecture at the beginning of the chapter was adapted from an essay titled "Aesthetics", by Jim Vernon.